Taking work home is MORE stressful than being at office

WHEN work is piling up and it looks like you’ll never get to leave the office, it’s tempting to head home and keep plugging away from there.

But working from home could be the worst thing you can do for your stress levels – and your health, warn scientists.

A study found that our ‘always on’ working culture – which sees us answering emails or planning meetings at home when we should be unwinding – is linked to cardiovascular disease.

And working from home was found to be far more stressful than actually being at work.

Heart monitors showed that more than half of the 550 city workers who took part in the study were more stressed at home than at work due to continuously thinking about their job.

Stress levels remained extremely high until around 8.30pm, with some continuing to be stressed until 1am.

The researchers from the University of Surrey and insurance firm AXA PPP Healthcare believe ‘spikes’ in the workers’ heart rates were caused by dealing with work problems while at home. The monitors also showed that more than 25 members of staff from the London offices of BNP Paribas woke up between 3am and 4am thinking about work – with some then starting to read or send emails, said the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Co- author David Plans, a researcher at Surrey and developer of the BioBeats monitors used in the study, said: ‘ Everybody knew that always working was bad, but now we can measure when it is happening and exactly what damage it is doing. It is much worse than we thought. It is killing people.

‘Dealing with work while at home is pernicious to health and is directly linkable to cardiovascular disease.’

Gordon Henderson, of AXA, added that the development of phones, laptops and tablets means today’s workers are ‘always on, whether you like it or not’.

‘This is the first generation that has had to deal with the ramifications of that,’ he said.